Wednesday, 23 July 2014

The Pressure of Coming Out and Why Homosexuality Shouldn't be a Big Deal

As the saying goes, it's better to just speak up than keeping something buried inside you, waiting until this something becomes so unbearable to keep you it explodes in someone else's face. Speaking from experience, this is mostly the case... emphasis on 'mostly'. It's the case when you accidentally break your mum's favourite vase and blame your sibling/pet, or when you tell your best friend you liked their outfit when in reality you didn't. But it's not the case with coming out being gay.

For most people, it's easy to just open up and say, “I'm gay.” but living in a world where being different is almost a crime, it's harder than ever, especially in the present Christian society. Christians believe that, since the Bible starts off with saying the world's first two humans were male and female, then that's still the case to date: only a male and female are allowed to fall in love, get married and have children. Despite that being the case, there is nothing in the Bible where it's opposing homosexuality. Nowhere in said Bible has Jesus ever discussed or merely addressed same-sex marriage.

Going back to the 'love should be between a man and woman issue: does that mean that the love a parent shows her child isn't real? Or the love a friend shows to another? When I, pro-LGBT, ask this question to a hardcore Christian, all of them reply with the same answer: “But that's different!” Why should love between friends, family and people of the same sex be different? What's so different and 'immoral' about it? Nothing. It's nothing different. During a discussion I had with a former teacher about whether gay couples should have kids, the first thing he told me was that he had nothing against gay marriage or gay couples in general, however he didn't agree with them raising children as the latter would grow up being gay.

This last statement made me—and most people in the class—cringe. It was like saying that all children born to a man and woman should be straight, when in reality this is mostly never the case. Most homosexuals are born to a man and woman, so why is it that Christians point at gay couples, telling them they can't raise a child because they might grow up 'just like them'? Furthermore, children born or raised by a gay couple is also believed, by Christians, to grow up 'sad, broken'... doesn't this happen in every family regardless of who the parent is?

Searching through the internet, I stumbled upon several pictures of a celebrity gay couple, consisting of actor Neil Patrick Harris and long-term fiancé chef David Burtka (picture), with their twin children, and there was nothing that showed that these children were sad or merely different from any other children.

The question I ask myself when I see gay couples with their very happy and very healthy children is why is homosexuality a big deal? A bigger, more general question is why there's a label when it comes to love. There shouldn't be pinning when it comes to something like love: people are people, not cans of food. There shouldn't be such thing as being straight or gay or anything of that sort. With several hundreds of campaigns to raise awareness against homophobia, there is hope for a more equal, united world.